


Course Correction

by Ransomedbard



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22582207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ransomedbard/pseuds/Ransomedbard
Summary: As the decade draws to an end, Trowa joins Quatre and Wufei on a working vacation, but they still manage to find time for a New Year’s toast.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: GW Cockatil Fridays





	Course Correction

Trowa floated weightless inside the cramped airlock, relishing a moment of downtime.

It was now past 11pm on New Year’s Eve. His friends had been on the outside of the ship for hours, working their photographic magic in the waning moments of the decade while he steered the ship in an endless loop with minor variations to set up their shots. Half an hour ago when they’d called him over the com to let him know they were finally finished, he had welcomed the news with a private sigh of relief. But then they’d followed that announcement with an invitation to join them outside to “ring in the New Year”. So he picked up his tired bones, set the autopilot and suited up as instructed, and was now waiting for them to finish setting up whatever surprise they had in store before he exited the hatch. If it was to happen before midnight, they had better hurry - there were only nine minutes left. 

He passed the time musing over what the surprise would be - a picture for him to post on his own social media was his guess. A kind and appropriate gesture, given the nature of their trip, but perhaps wasted on him, because he only had an account in the first place to keep up with what they and his other friends were doing. In turn, those friends made up his scarce two dozen followers - although if he posted their photograph that might change; Quatre and Wufei had tens of thousands of followers each.

Neither of them had set out to become a minor celebrity; it had simply built up slowly over time. Wufei, who traveled often for work had made his start after he posted images of a lunar eclipse that he happened upon by accident. Taken on a shuttle leaving the Earth for L3, the planet hung vast and bright in the foreground, casting a dark, crisp shadow over the moon. The stark beauty of it had fired Wufei’s imagination and he began to seek out more. He chose unique and little known conjunctions and phenomena, performed his own calculations as to when they would occur and the best approach to take, and then scheduled his flights on everything from luxury cruises to commuter red-eyes in order to capture them.

If Wufei’s specialty was capturing nature‘s rarest moments, Quatre’s by contrast was all about making you believe in the reality of things that had never existed. He delighted in trompe l'oeil, forced perspective, and strange camera lenses; he was a wizard at capturing reflections, utilizing atmospheric distortions, and other tricks to fool the eye. But his real genius was in the intricate miniatures and props that he made himself and integrated into his scenes - always as practical effects, as both he and Wufei prided themselves on not altering or compositing an image after the fact.

They had each fallen into spending more and more time on their respective branches of photography, and amassed a respectable following, at which point they had started good-naturedly ragging on each other. This had naturally escalated into the issuing of a challenge that had attracted a lot of attention and reblogs. After several of these occurred without a clear victor, they had announced their “End of the Decade” collaboration. He suspected this had all been planned in advance, but it was a stroke of genius, uniting their fans and heightening their fame.

Trowa was deeply amused by it all - until he got caught up in it. At the beginning of December, Wufei and Quatre had asked him if he’d be willing to help them out, as their plans had grown to be too much for the two of them to accomplish alone. Realizing he had unspent vacation days that would otherwise go to waste, he took the last week of the year off. They’d picked him up in the early hours of Christmas morning, and since then he’d been piloting the ship while they worked together to pull off some of their most ambitious shots.

He hadn’t been prepared for how physically taxing it would be. They were exacting in their requirements and he’d had to raise the sensitivity of the controls to the utmost and work with hair-trigger precision to get the exact rotation or angle they wanted. The itinerary Wufei had worked out had foregone a regular sleep schedule in the interest of catching as many interesting photo opportunities as possible, and the many hours Trowa had spent bent over the controls had added sore shoulders and a painful neck to the list of sacrifices he’d made for their art.

_But you’ve enjoyed it nonetheless,_ chimed in the part of his mind that remained a sort of neutral observer, and Trowa nodded in agreement. The last few days had been hard, certainly, but the freedom from his daily responsibilities, the energy of his friends, and even the hard-won accomplishment of lining up the perfect shot for them made up for it. Yes, this trip had been better than he hoped, and a bit of an eye-opener; it had something he’d been missing.

What exactly that something was, he didn’t know yet, but in his unhurried way he was confident that he would figure it out, and then make any necessary changes. His philosophy of life owed much to his piloting roots; making course corrections was simply second nature.

He glanced at the clock built into the airlock wall and tapped to activate his com mic. “Five minutes left.”

Wufei made a reply that might have been “ugh,” but followed it with “come along up starboard, and — Quatre, could you move that out of the shot?”

Trowa had already cycled the air out of the lock, so within a minute he was out on the exterior of the ship, his tether clipped to their walk line. It was a small runner, but it still had a few outside cargo attachment points for bringing along any bulky items that were safe in the vacuum and radiation of space. Trowa knew his friends had made good use of these points for mounting tripods, but he stopped short when he spotted what they’d done for his surprise.

Smack dab in the middle of the starboard side was a tall, round bar table of sleek dark wood and three matching high backed chairs. The table was set with a softly glowing lamp with a dark shade, a few square napkins, and even what looked like a small puddle of spilled drink.

Trowa laughed delightedly, then settled himself into the chair in the middle and tucked his safety line behind him, out of sight. “Very nice. Don’t tell me you’ve filled my sip-line with alcohol?”

Wufei chuckled. “That would be going a little too far.”

Quatre took the seat at Trowa’s left, his hands full of three champagne flutes, each seemingly full of the light golden liquid. A gentle cascade of rising bubbles was frozen in each glass.

“Full of dyed resin,” he said, giving the one in his right hand a little shake and offering it to him. “And an upward pointing LED in the base; otherwise they looked too dark.” Trowa took the glass and settled it between his gloved fingers in a natural pose.

Wufei finished fussing with the camera mounted on a tripod a meter away, then came and sat down with a little tap of his hand on the table like a runner touching home. “Done! And with ninety seconds to spare!”

Quatre passed Wufei his glass and they all took a long moment to look behind them at the background for their picture. The Earth was high and relatively small, occupying much the same position the moon might in the Earth’s night sky. Compared to their usual shots it was pure simplicity, but even a novice like Trowa could see in his mind’s eye how well it would come together.

Only a minute remained before midnight. They turned back to the camera, relaxed and all smiles, just three friends enjoying a night out. Quatre cracked a joke, and Wufei carried a few bars of _Auld Lang Syne_.

Trowa was content to sit quietly and soak it all in. He felt closer to that missing something already.

The camera flashed a red light rapidly in warning as the flash prepared to fire. Trowa lifted his glass slightly and tilted it towards the center of the table, and his friends followed suit, the rims touching in a silent clink.

“A toast,” he said, “to the New Year - and all the possibilities it holds.”


End file.
